I went to that twitter, saw that the giraffe was named Hank, then saw that the Red Panda was named Rusty, and guffawed. I bet there’s a red fox named Dean on the premises, or perhaps a Malcolm in the butterfly rooms.

“I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, they’d have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me. They’d get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody’d think I was just a poor deaf-mute bastard and they’d leave me alone.”

I know I’m late, but I’m so glad I found this. It’s been driving me crazy as to whether Marcie is Deaf and we just don’t see Sal sign a lot to her, whether she’s Deaf and lip reads, whether she’s deaf or hard of hearing enough that she can hear most conversations, but prefers not to voice or what.
Every scenario had elements within the comic that were off and suggested that wasn’t quite it. When I first stumbled upon this comic (yup. I’m one of those weirdos that started with DoA. And only quite recently too.) I just assumed the little details that were off were a result of the artist not knowing these subtle things about Deaf culture and Deaf/deaf/hard-of-hearing people, but now that I’ve read all of DoA to date almost twice, all of Shortpacked, and a bit of Walky I know that just cant be the case.
Willis, you are delightfully thorough even when it comes to little-known cultures or even randoms that you could get by with not worrying about the details. It’s one of the many, many things I love about your comics.
But, knowing that I was back to being completely confused and completely frustrated by what Marcie’s story might be. So, even though I’d love to know more about Marcie, for now I feel satiated with this little piece of informations.

Marcie can hear but not speak. I don’t think it’s been spelled out explicitly in the comic, but she doesn’t seem to have any trouble understanding what people are saying when she can’t see their mouths, and Willis has confirmed it.

But her hair’s awesome! Why is she hiding it? Why do so many people have contempt for curly hair that sticks out everywhere? And why is it most common among people who claim to want to be attractive, when their bizarre hair-straightening ritual proves they don’t?